This invention relates generally to the field of docket scheduling for the legal profession and more specifically to calculating court dates such as court deadlines.
The timing between a sequence of events of most legal matters, such as a lawsuit, are defined by court rules originating from statues, by local court rules originating in a local jurisdiction, and by individual court rules created by individual judges. These court rules may vary by the type of legal matter, by mutual consent of the parties involved in the matter, and by decree of a judge overseeing a matter. Failing to meet a deadline for an event defined by a court rule my result in a procedural error that is fatal to a party's position in the legal matter. Therefore, members of the legal professions place great emphasis and importance in meeting deadlines defined by the court rules.
The complexity and multiple sources of court rules creates a management problem for a legal practitioner. If a legal practitioner intends to successfully meet each and every deadline date in a matter, the legal practitioner must be aware of each court rule in each court, and the legal practitioner must be able to accurately calculate a court date using a set of court rules. In addition, the court rules may change in time, necessitating a recalculation of a matter's dates. While an automated court calendar generation system may be used to encapsulate the court rules and relieve the legal practitioner from understanding the complexity of the court rules, some legal practitioners may not have the resources to create such an automated system. Also, even if a legal practitioner does have the necessary resources to create a court calendar generation system, the legal practitioner may not want to maintain such a complex system.